????金融和體育記者

????收集信息，采訪當事人，問問何人在何時何地發生了何事，原因為何，然后寫出結果，這就是記者的日常工作。但是只要把信息變成機器可讀的格式，你就具有了顛覆記者這個行業的可能性。

????自2014年6月起，美聯社就開始利用Automated Insights公司的軟件和扎克斯投資研究公司的數據，試驗由計算機自動創建企業收益報道的可能性。在排除了試驗初期出現的一些問題后，整個生成報告的過程基本上不會出現差錯，甚至可能還要超過人工報告的水平。

????目前，美聯社（AP）的體育部門正在利用自動化技術，生成一些小型體育賽事的報道。美聯社表示，這種做法可以解放員工，讓他們去做更重要的事情，同時也緩解了媒體預算。軟件科學家、《機器人崛起：科技與未來失業的威脅》一書的作者馬丁?福特表示：“美聯社稱，該技術可以根據數據撰寫出一份頗有吸引力的文章，水平不亞于一名經驗豐富的作家。”考慮到有些大學畢業生的寫作水平確實不怎么樣，加上“機器要想超越一名大學生，需要克服的障礙并不那么高”，記者這個行當的前景的確令人堪憂。曾幾何時，剛入行的菜鳥們也要干些低難度的活，學學基本的手藝。這才不到一年，記者的潛在生存空間已經變小了。

????Financial and Sports Reporters

????Gathering information; interviewing people; answering who, what when, where, why, and how; and writing the results. It's the daily grind for journalists. But make the information machine readable and you have the potential for disruption.

????Associated Press has run an experiment of automatically creating corporate earnings reports since June 2014 with software from Automated Insights and data from Zacks Investment Research. After working through problems at the outset, the process is virtually error-free, which likely beats what humans would do.

????AP's sports department is using automation to generate reports for events with small audiences. The organization says it frees up staff to do more important things, helping stretch media budgets. "The company claims it can weave that data into a compelling narrative that on a skill level an experienced writer can do," said Martin Ford, a software entrepreneur and author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. Given the sometimes questionable level of writing demonstrated by college graduates and "the hurdle machines have to cross to out-perform humans with college degrees isn't that high." But at one time junior reporters would have done the duller work and learned basics of their craft. In less than a year, the potential pool has become smaller.